Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official eBook

At Bheragarh,[5] the high priest of the temple told
us that Aurangzeb and his soldiers knocked off the
heads, arms, and noses of all the idols, saying that
’if they had really any of the godhead in them,
they would assuredly now show it, and save themselves’.
But when they came to the door of Gauri Sankar’s
apartments, they were attacked by a nest of hornets,
that put the whole of the emperor’s army to
the rout; and his imperial majesty called out:
’Here we have really something like a god, and
we shall not suffer him to be molested; if all your
gods could give us proof like this of their divinity,
not a nose of them would ever be touched’.

The popular belief, however, is that after Aurangzeb’s
army had struck off all the prominent features of
the other gods, one of the soldiers entered the temple,
and struck off the ear of one of the prostrate images
underneath their vehicle, the Bull. ‘My
dear’, said Gauri, ‘do you see what these
saucy men are about?’ Her consort turned round
his head;[6] and, seeing the soldiers around him,
brought all the hornets up from the marble rocks below,
where there are still so many nests of them, and the
whole army fled before them to Teori, five miles.[7]
It is very likely that some body of troops by whom
the rest of the images had been mutilated, may have
been driven off by a nest of hornets from within the
temple where this statue stands. I have seen
six companies of infantry, with a train of artillery
and a squadron of horse, all put to the rout by a single
nest of hornets, and driven off some miles with all
their horses and bullocks. The officers generally
save themselves by keeping within their tents, and
creeping under their bed-clothes, or their carpets;
and servants often escape by covering themselves up
in their blankets, and lying perfectly still.
Horses are often stung to a state of madness, in which
they throw themselves over precipices and break their
limbs, or kill themselves. The grooms, in trying
to save their horses, are generally the people who
suffer most in a camp attacked by such an enemy.
I have seen some so stung as to recover with difficulty;
and I believe there have been instances of people
not recovering at all. In such a frightful scene
I have seen a bullock sitting and chewing the cud
as calmly as if the whole thing had been got up for
his amusement. The hornets seldom touch any animal
that remains perfectly still.

On the bank of the Bina river at Eran, in the Sagar
district, is a beautiful pillar of a single freestone,
more than fifty feet high, surmounted by a figure
of Krishna, with the glory round his head.[8] Some
few of the rays of this glory have been struck off
by lightning; but the people declare that this was
done by a shot fired at it from a cannon by order
of Aurangzeb, as his army was marching by on its way
to the Deccan. Before the scattered fragments,
however, could reach the ground, the air was filled,
they say, by a swarm of hornets, that put the whole